The unwanted (and therefore scorned) child of a prostitute with one of her clients, Matteo was abandoned at an orphanage when he was four with nothing but the clothes on his body – no name, no belongings, no explanations. Due to the tender age at which he was abandoned, Matteo remembers next to nothing about his mother, just black hair, blue eyes and a voice saying the same phrase, always: “You look so much like him”. The only thing his mother did leave him was a note pinned to his frayed coat, in which was written the orphanage was never to tell Matteo who his mother was, but that if he wanted to find his father, he could look for a James that was assigned to the (place) army.

As much as Matteo tries to deny it, the abandonment left its scars -- besides his horrid temper, the boy would also go into nearly incapacitating fits of rage that had him screaming, smashing objects and assaulting whoever was around. The church members that ran the orphanage had an overwhelming difficulty in dealing with Matteo, resorting to physical punishments that should in no way, shape or form be used with children, and the nuns in charge didn't know how to deal with an infant during a breakdown, clueless to things outside of their religious sphere. That was why they punished Matteo: in the hopes of it being nothing but a childish tantrum. Countless were the times when Matteo was forced to kneel down on gravel, the stones digging deep into his bony knees until he was bleeding, and in this position he compulsively repeated the prayers he had been taught, head forced against the altar. "Maybe like this," they'd say, "you'll listen to God and stop being such a burden."

The physical punishments got more rigorous the older he got, ranging from Matteo holding his hand on top of a lit candle until the flame burned his skin to waterboarding sessions, where he was tied down to a table, had his face covered with a cloth and water was poured on his head. Perhaps due to fatigue, perhaps due to fear, Matteo forced himself to learn how to control his fits of rage and his sudden mood swings. The pain wasn't worth it, the words of abuse haunted him when he laid down to sleep, and the boy even heard the word 'exorcism' being said when he was nothing but eleven.

All of that, however, never stopped the voice in his head; one that claimed for violence, one that hated everything and everyone around him, one that constantly told him to hurt the other children and the sisters. In fact, all the emotional and physical abuse turned it from a mere occasional whisper to a loud, constant yelling, and try as he might, Matteo could feel himself quickly approaching a breaking point. His fits weren't frequent anymore, but when they did happen, they were truly horrifying affairs... as were the punishments.

The lashes started when he was thirteen. No one did it to him -- one of the sisters simply gave Matteo a whip and ordered: repent. Matteo didn't understand, looking up at the woman with confused eyes, and she explained in a stern tone that he was to flagellate himself. The boy didn't leave the room until his back was bleeding and the pain felt like enough to kill him.

But it didn't. None of the punishments seemed to work anymore, seeing as Matteo just pushed through them and withstood the pain with gritted teeth and tears in his eyes. The harder the sisters tried to break him, the stronger and angrier he seemed to become. The more blood he spilled, the louder the voice in his head hollered.

hurt them

kill them

make them feel your misery

they see you as a demon. prove them right

And he would do exactly that.

Matteo ran away from the orphanage when he was fourteen. Maybe ran away wasn't the right word for it... It burned down and he had no other choice but to leave -- he was the one who set it on fire, after all. Matteo told all the other kids, even the ones he hated and thought deserved to die, to leave to the building when he gave the signal. He then burned it down and never dared to go back to know what happened; if any of the sisters survived, if the other children found a new home to care for them, if they found out it was him. He was done with that place. There was nothing there for him.

The only thing he took was the note his mother had attached to his coat all those years ago.

He spent a good while living on the streets of a nearby town. Just a 'poor girl', getting by from scraps and rotten food and rags. Matteo faced starvation and dehydration, and got acquainted with both the coldest night and the hottest day. Every morning he wondered if he would survive, and somehow he did. Perhaps out of spite. His body just refused to die.

It was a few weeks after he turned five-and-ten that a man approached him and put a dagger to his hand. He said he would give Matteo food and shelter if he killed someone for him. The boy didn't even hesitate or ask questions -- he was desperate and morality had no meaning to him when faced with the prospect of safety. It was easy to hide in the shadows, considering he was such a scrawny teen, and it was even easier to stab his victim. Again and again and again. Somehow he couldn't stop, and he laughed and cried as he plunged the knife over and over into the already lifeless body. The teen was caked in gore when he arrived at the previously agreed spot, and his contractor did good on his promise: he gave Matteo food, a bath, clean clothes and a warm bed to sleep in.

Matteo also killed him that night. No man who asks a child to murder someone is truly a nice person, let alone one to be trusted. He took all of the man's money and food, mounted on his horse and went as far away as possible. He had no clue where -- usually Matteo just followed the road to wherever it led him.

He swore to himself he'd never kill anyone again, no matter how much they deserved it, so becoming an assassin wasn't an option. Matteo had to survive, however, so he took all the odd jobs he could find in all the towns he visited. He learned how to sew and cook, how to plow and sow a field, and how to tend to animals. He learned how to pass as a boy and how to defend himself -- how to fight with fists and nails, with words and teeth.

The first time Matteo held a lance was to defend a farm he had been working on. It was also the first time he ever killed a monster. They were lizard-like creatures, big as foals. When he pierced one through the eye, it screamed, and gods. It almost sounded like a human. That sound, the image of blood dripping down his blade, the feeling as he stepped on its skull and it cracked beneath his foot... he had never felt anything quite like that. It felt like a calling, like he had finally found something that made him feel... that made him feel.

He killed them all. By the time Matteo was done, the field was covered in red and littered with dismembered body parts. And he felt wonderful. Killing people had felt like a burden, but this... this felt like absolution. Like some sort of poetic justice.

Matteo briefly recalled his mother's voice saying how he was a monster, how he had turned into a demon and was no longer human. It all kind of clicked together there.

The family that had hired Matteo to help with the fields was quick to get rid of him, but the boy didn't care. Plowing and sewing and cooking meant nothing to him anymore -- his one desire was to kill all the creatures that had emerged with the cascade. All the things that somehow reminded him how inhuman he felt during his entire life. Behind his back, the townspeople whispered: that boy is a butcherer. Matteo rejoiced on the title, wearing it like a badge of honor.

It was easy for Matteo's reputation to grow after this -- an efficient killer, the people who hired him always said. It wasn't really a lucrative field to work on, but Matteo made do from bounty to bounty. He gathered enough money to commission a magical weapon from a blacksmith in (name), a glaive which he named Maleus Maleficarum -- The Hammer of Witches, a blade created to kill magical creatures faster and more efficiently. With the lance on his back and the deceitfully easy smile on his face, Matteo continued his reckless slaughter of all things inhuman.

The closest Matteo ever got to settling down were the couple of months he spent at Macdare. There, besides the usual bounties, he found constant work defending farms against monsters, and a very nice inkeep (whose daughter he might or might not be fucking at the time) allowed him to live in one of the rooms for a small fee due to his service to the town. It was in Macdare that Matteo met Saoirse as well, a doctor-slash-alchemist who helped him with many of his issues -- the insomnia, the headaches, the voices, and even his inconvenient period. It was a peaceful period of his life... which obviously means it didn't last long.

Of course, seventeen years of life and only two or three of actual fighting weren't enough to be able to deal with all kinds of monsters, and Matteo was a proud thing, never accepting help when it came to his jobs. That was how he found himself almost dying beneath the claws of a particularly vicious beast, pinned down with no way to use his weapon. The boy had come to terms that he was about to die; in fact, he was almost glad that it was finally happening, but the gods seemed to have other plans. When he was sure his throat was about to be ripped out, the creature was dragged away into the shadows and simply disappeared. Matteo sat there, dumbfounded, until a man emerged from said shadows and questioned if he was okay.

The man's name was Kaede, and he became Matteo's first and only partner. (And definitely lived to regret it.)